The Moral Liberal

Called Unto Liberty, J. Reuben Clark Jr., 20th Century Sermons

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments in words declared: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” That is to say, the rights enumerated in the Constitution and the first ten Amendments were not the sum of the rights possessed by the people. The total residuum of power, the sovereignty, rested in the people, not in the government nor in its officers. This marked the fundamental difference between this Anglo-Saxon Constitution and the government set up under it, and the Justinian and Napoleonic codes and the governments set up under them.

With us, the government possesses only those powers we specifically give to it; we the people, the sovereign, possess all else. With them, the people have only the rights given by the Emperor and specified in the codes,—the Emperor, the sovereign, retaining all the residuum of power.

I have often put the situation thus: we look into our laws to see what we may not do, for we may do anything we have not given away, for the whole residuum is ours. They look into their laws to see what they may do, for they may do only the things the Emperor has said they may do, for all the residuum of power is in him. This makes us free men; it makes them subjects. Statism is the principle behind the Justinian and Napoleonic codes, carried to the nth power.

But to make this principle doubly secure under our Constitution, the Fathers added a further stipulation: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”⁽¹⁷⁾

To reiterate,—for it cannot be too often said: This provision makes clear that the powers of our government are not inherent therein, but are delegated, which means, in other words, that the government has such powers and such powers only as [p. 85] the people have given them in and by the Constitution, and this means all the residuum of power is in the people.⁽¹⁸⁾

Congress can legislate about those things only which we the people have authorized them to deal with. That Senators and Congressmen are our representatives to legislate about these specified things does not authorize them to legislate about things not covered by the Constitution. For them to do so is for them to usurp power and, in effect, to change and amend the Constitution, and we the people have given them no authority to do this; indeed, we have specifically provided other means and methods for amendment. This is not true of the laws of Justinian and Napoleon, for there the residuum of power being in the Emperor, his government may invoke powers as it may wish, the residuum of power resting there . . . .

Moreover, these powers being powers delegated by the people, it follows they may not be enlarged, contracted, or transferred to any other agency or from one to either of the others without the constitutional mandate of the people.⁽¹⁹⁾ Yet, beginning with the NRA under General Hugh Johnson and since, Congress, under the domination of those who in turn were under the influence and direction of European political emigres and their political satellites of this country, has passed law after law that provided for the exercise, by the very same tribunal, of legislative, executive, and judicial powers—a tribunal that made the law, judged the law, and prescribed the penalty, and then executed it—in many cases, it would appear, without provision for an appeal to the courts. All this was presumably in harmony with the constitutional law of the European emigres, [p. 86] but wholly violative and destructive of our American constitutional system.

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Source: J. Reuben Clark Jr., The Church News Section of The Deseret News Newspaper, September 25, 1949. J. Reuben Clark Jr. (1871–1961), served as a mem­ber of the First Pres­i­dency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1931–1961. Prior to his full-time church ser­vice he was assis­tant solic­i­tor to the State Depart­ment, worked in the Attor­ney General’s office, Under Sec­re­tary of State, the author of the clas­sic study, the “Clark Mem­o­ran­dum on the Mon­roe Doc­trine” and U.S. ambas­sador to Mex­ico. Among those who knew his work best, J. Reuben Clark was rec­og­nized as the fore­most con­sti­tu­tional scholar of the 20th Century.